HarperCollins gets one up on Google

The googlewatch blog is reporting today that “publishers who want to make their books searchable online” now have a non-Google option to turn to. LibreDigital, ” a division of Newstand, which provides exact digital duplicates (layout included) of newspapers” is offering the first “service … to allow publishers to digitally capture and deliver book content in a controlled context online.”

“Publisher HarperCollins and Austin, Texas-based LibreDigital announced today a hosted service called LibreDigital Warehouse that will give publishers and booksellers the ability to deliver searchable book content on their own web sites. Like Google Book Search, the service will allow users to search the entire content of a book and preview a percentage of its text and illustrations,” according to the story. LibreDigital Warehouse has a leg up on Google because publishers can “customize which pages a user can view, which pages are always prohibited from viewing (such as the last three pages of a novel), and what overall percentage of a book is viewable. Publishers can customize these rules per title and per partner.”

Although Google is being sued by the Author’s Guild for their service, HarperCollins is going full-steam ahead with their new service, providing 160 to 200 titles initially and up to 10,000 titles in the future.